Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(33)

She snorts. “I’m going to be sick of burgers by the time we get there.”

“I say we drive through the night, and stop somewhere tomorrow afternoon to rest up. That okay with you?”

“Yeah, go for it.”

Ellie eats her Mounds in silence as I drive, but she keeps glancing at me. I know because she has to turn her whole head to see me. It’s not very slick on her part. She wriggles and yawns again, and sits with her body cocked to face me as I drive.

“Did you really not have any girlfriends or anything the whole time?”

“Not a one.”

“Why?”

“Wouldn’t be fair.”

“To me?”

“To them. They wouldn’t be you.”

“Very smooth,” Ellie says, smirking. “You know I want to believe you.”

“What about you?”

She laughs, but it has a bitter twist. “Me? What, a boyfriend? Not a chance in hell. My only social contact is online. Where people can’t see me.”

“People get boyfriends online.”

She snorts. “Right, that’d be a good one. I bet it would go viral. I got an online date and she turned out to be the Mummy.”

“Ellie…”

“You can keep giving me a put-on that I’m not ugly but I’m never going to buy it, Jack.”

“What do I have to do to convince you?”

She doesn’t say a word. She just looks at me.

A little smirk twitches her lips, or maybe it’s my imagination.

“You know,” I say, “last night. Did you like it?”

“Why do you ask? Want me to return the favor?”

“Yeah, but I want to know if you liked it.”

She smiles a crooked smile. “What do you think?”

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

“Beats my own hand.”

I flex my hands on the steering wheel.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could do if I got my hands on you.”

“Did you? What would you do to me?”

I flinch, and my stomach tightens.

“Well,” I say, fighting to keep my voice even. “I know way back when, all we did was kiss.”

Ellie barks a laugh then winces and rubs her cheek on the bad side. “Ow,” she mutters.

“Sorry. Why—”

“All we did was kiss, my ass. Dry humping and feeling me up does not constitute ‘kissing.’”

“You had your shirt on, it doesn’t count. A bra, too.”

“Oh, so that’s all it is. You flew halfway around the world to cop a feel. That’s your answer? Oh, Ellie, I’ve been dreaming about squeezing your boobs.”

“I was going to try and be a little more poetic but that’s pretty much the gist of it, yeah.”

She sighs. “You’re still you.”

I laugh. “I don’t know how true that is, God. I feel like a different person.”

“You feel like a different person,” she says bitterly. “Right.”

“You’re still you, too.”

Ellie frowns and turns in the seat to face straight ahead, away from me.

“You keep trying to hide it, but the Ellie I remember is still in there. She’s scared and hurt but she’s there.”

She doesn’t say anything. I drive. It’s a risk, but I pull onto the interstate. I just need to keep it under the limit. It’s hard, the ’Vette wants to stretch her legs.

By the next time Ellie speaks, we’re crossing the border into Illinois, and it’s well after midnight. She was completely silent eating her burger. We hit a drive-thru a few hours ago. Things get weird late at night like this. There’s nobody on the highway but us, a truck way back, and a pair of taillights far ahead. An occasional car comes the other way, or a truck.

“My dad used to listen to that Art Bell guy late at night,” she says absently. “When I was little he’d talk with my uncle for hours about that crap. Aliens and conspiracies. My uncle said alien lizards run the government.”

I bark out a laugh. “No shit, seriously?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how serious about it he is. He never sounded like he really believed it. It was like a joke between them, but they ate it up.”

She swallows.

“Remember that show Unsolved Mysteries?”

“Do I? Jesus, just the theme song scared the shit out of me.”

Ellie laughs. “Oh my God, me too. They did this episode about people that got taken into a spaceship by aliens and probed. They call them abductees.”

“God,” I say with a shudder. “Makes my skin crawl.”

“I didn’t sleep for a week.”

She goes quiet again and yawns in her funny, squeaky way.

“I missed you.”

“Ellie,” I say softly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. I keep replaying it in my head. You ever wish you could go back?”

“Of course.”

“I mean as yourself, like you are now. Like an adult.”

She turns to look at me. “No.”

“I do. I wish I wasn’t such a little shit. I should have punched him in the face, not just took it.”